Permo-Triassic cephalopod hunt

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Haliphron Atlanticus

Today's trip didn't actually result in any cephalopods since I ran out of daylight, but there was a beautiful late afternoon light over interesting scenery and I now know how to get to the locations.

The first photo shows white Permo-Triassic limestones caught up beneath the huge slab of Cretaceous ocean crust that was obducted onto continental crust here during Late Cretaceous time. The darker rocks in the distance are ophiolite (ocean crust). The picture with the palm trees also shows typical ophiolite scenery.

The red rocks beneath the ancient watchtower are deep-water sediments intensely folded during the emplacement of the ophiolite. The detail of the near-vertical bedded red rocks shows Permian cephalopod limestones. Triassic breccias and platy limestones are a short distance to the right of this view.

Haliphron Atlanticus

So, I went back today (with a couple of accomplices) and yes D, a hike up a mountain was involved. There was some very fossiliferous rock up there and we found several ammonoids together with orthocones, corals, crinoids, bivalves and brachiopods.

We stopped at Bidbid fort (top photo) on the way, drove through some fine scenery, had lunch on an outcrop of red deep-sea cherts (with the Euphorbia in the foreground), and eventually looked up at that outcrop of limestone, our destination for the day.

Architeuthis

Beautiful scenery Hajar! Oh how I wish this snow was gone.
Like Terri's Ordovician, your Triassic is alot like we have over here. Unfortunately it, like the Ordovician is just a slightly different age, the Ordovician of Tennessee is just younger and the Triassic of Oman is just older. We find Eumorphotis and possibly the last of Claraia, but the ammonoids are quite different.

Haliphron Atlanticus

Interesting to think that these animals were living shortly after the most severe mass extinction in Earth history.

Here attached is a photo from last night's starwatch site (what a spectacularly clear night and Jupiter with four moons a fine sight). We camped on Lower Permian rocks, cross-bedded shallow marine with very abundant fossils.

Haliphron Atlanticus

I read a bit more about that section and found: "evidence of an extraordinarily rapid faunal recovery after the P-Tr crisis" ... "It contains also the most diverse Griesbachian assemblage known to date, which has a community structure not normally recorded in pre-Spathian rocks and which was living under well oxygenated conditions".

The long thin objects are scaphopods though I picked them up in the hope that they might be orthocones. Bellerophontids were also very common (masquerading as goniatites!).